The more peripheral ("eco-guilt," the Death of the Great American Road Trip, the unfortunate vindication & subsequent poignancy of Kevin Costner's Waterworld, not to mention polar bear zombies-of-the-sea...) have received less attention.
When I'm feeling especially Gore-y, I get anxious thinking about the details of my own habitat. I think globally, but I worry locally. And, why not? After all, THE GLOBAL CLIMATE is a fairly recondite system, as perplexing and unfathomable - to me - as quantum physics or the fact that Con Air grossed over $200 million at the worldwide box office. Meteorologists seem to have difficulty predicting the wind speed in a dome stadium. What makes us think they can accurately project the particulars of how our wanton consumption will ultimately doom us? My guess is that when the last "i" is dotted and the last "t" is crossed, when the last drop of oil is burned and the last virgin is coaxed into an apocalyptic tryst, we'll all have a big laugh about how wrong our forecast was.
Joking aside, I love Upstate New York. We have four beautiful seasons, of which fall is king. It'll be a sad sight when I wake up here in late September and the leaves are brown. Or green. Or gone. And if somebody starts messing with my apple sauce or other autumnal staple foods, well, then I'm just going to lose my shit.
There's a book I enjoyed during my junior year of college called Twelve Moons of the Year. It's an anthology of nature editorials written by Hal Borland (1900-1978) for The New York Times, a body of work thirty-five years and 1,900+ columns in the making. I don't remember being particularly homesick that year (with the notable exception of some of my time studying abroad in England), but Borland wrote in a very clear, comforting way about an anonymous landscape that easily could have been my beloved Mohawk-Hudson Valley. He wasn't a revolutionary and he wasn't a wonk. Just an appreciator of the Earth with lots of different ways to say "thanks." An acolyte of the school that maintains we were given the responsibility of stewardship of creation, not the privilege of dominion over it.
Occasionally, he's boring. But he's boring in a steady, dependable, grandfatherly fashion. And, occasionally, he's exciting. Like when his prose takes a hard turn toward the romantic and gets away from him. I always forgive him. There are exactly two situations in which it is acceptable - nay, preferable - to over-write:
(1) describing natural beauty
(2) wooing women.
So, in the interest of nostalgia and without even attempting to secure copyright permission, I think I will from time to time transcribe some of Borland's better pieces. It so happens that the entries for "March 4" and "March 5th" both make allusions to the beginning of spring. They are quietly hopeful, which is, as it also so happens, how I am feeling right now. For the time being, global warming is still beyond the threshold and Borland's words still apply. Perhaps there will come a day in the not-too-distant future when this book is an even curiouser relic to me than it is now, but it's not here yet.
"Song Again" ~ March 4
By early March you can begin to hear April, even on dour and lowery days. The winter birds now find time for a few songs when they have stocked their inner fires and pause for a few minutes and pause for a few minutes in the lengthening daylight. Despite snow or ice or sleety rain, the unseen forces of spring are beginning to work in the very fiber of life, and the birds respond.
Dooryard chickadees that have twittered companionably for weeks now indulge in full phrases, five and even seven notes, and there is the lilt of song, not mere greeting, in these notes. Tree sparrows, which can sing even in a snowstorm, now make even the dark days somewhat brighter. And song sparrows come out of the thickets and achieve the melodies that inspired their name, songs as lively and bubbling as an April brook.
Crows have no song, but their calls are less raucous and less defiant now as they watch the weather in the naked treetops. And blue jays, those jeering dandies who can make the most harmless prank look criminal, whistle haunting two-note calls that echo like the exuberant mating call of the cardinal.
Winter slowly frays out. March melt and mud still lie ahead, and probably March snowstorms. April is still a hope and a promise, but its faint, far-off song begins to tremble on the distant hilltops. The birds hear it and now testify to its truth.
By early March you can begin to hear April, even on dour and lowery days. The winter birds now find time for a few songs when they have stocked their inner fires and pause for a few minutes and pause for a few minutes in the lengthening daylight. Despite snow or ice or sleety rain, the unseen forces of spring are beginning to work in the very fiber of life, and the birds respond.
Dooryard chickadees that have twittered companionably for weeks now indulge in full phrases, five and even seven notes, and there is the lilt of song, not mere greeting, in these notes. Tree sparrows, which can sing even in a snowstorm, now make even the dark days somewhat brighter. And song sparrows come out of the thickets and achieve the melodies that inspired their name, songs as lively and bubbling as an April brook.
Crows have no song, but their calls are less raucous and less defiant now as they watch the weather in the naked treetops. And blue jays, those jeering dandies who can make the most harmless prank look criminal, whistle haunting two-note calls that echo like the exuberant mating call of the cardinal.
Winter slowly frays out. March melt and mud still lie ahead, and probably March snowstorms. April is still a hope and a promise, but its faint, far-off song begins to tremble on the distant hilltops. The birds hear it and now testify to its truth.
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